In the late 19th Century the Scots took comfort from the traditional rhyme: “From ghoulies and ghosties / And long-leggedy beasties / And things that go bump in the night/ Good Lord, deliver us!” We probably look back at our ancestors with a kindly, but rather superior, eye. If time travel was possible, and they could be transported to our age of quantum computing, artificial intelligence and social media, surely they would be a bit shame-faced at their superstition?
But hold on a second. Has the 21st Century actually risen above such nonsense? Have those things that go bump in the night really been vanquished by our sophisticated society and its technology? According a meticulous new study by researcher Eric Dullin, published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, the answer is a resounding “No”.
Eric, a mechanical and electrical engineer, with a PhD and an interest in the paranormal, studiously combed through over 1,200 cases of poltergeist infestation from ancient times to the modern day. His conclusion is that these “noisy ghosts” are alive and well, so to speak, and should be taken very seriously.
“What struck me most,” Dullin explains, “is the remarkable consistency of reports across different countries and centuries – objects moving with non-ballistic trajectories, appearing to dodge obstacles, or landing gently despite high-speed flight.”
Through the ages poltergeists have terrified families, baffled investigators, and defied explanation. In hundreds of authenticated cases from the 11th to the 21st Centuries impossible, unscientific things have happened which no-one has been able to replicate. Somehow, invisible energies start fires, move furniture, hurl stones, write on walls, smash crockery, produce knockings, speak in disembodied voices, play havoc with electrical appliances, and have even produced a rainstorm inside a house.
Eric says your first instinct may be to laugh off these stories. But even in the 21st Century poltergeist happenings are turning up in homes, shops, warehouses, schools and theatres. Our world that thinks it has rational answers for everything still cannot explain how a heavy ashtray can levitate, navigate around obstacles, and land as softly as a feather.
From 17th-century Germany to 21st-century Seattle, witnesses describe the same eerie behaviours: objects that turn 90 degrees in mid-air, hover as though thinking twice, or curve politely around furniture. In one Florida warehouse, parapsychologist William Roll watched as an ashtray zipped across the room and then steered itself neatly around a cowbell in its path.
Sound is another hallmark. Families hear thundering crashes, as though a piano has been dropped from a great height, yet they find rooms undisturbed. And then there are the infamous stone showers. For three years in Mayanup in Australia, pebbles materialised from nowhere, inside homes, floating gently downwards, sometimes passing straight through solid tables. Police, helicopters, and guard dogs couldn’t catch a culprit because there wasn’t one.
The most mind-stretching reports recorded in Eric’s study involve objects appearing and disappearing in sealed spaces. Tools escape locked boxes and reappear elsewhere; a coat teleports from a wardrobe to outside in the snow. Children are lifted from their beds and deposited in the room next door, unharmed but bewildered.
What sets poltergeists apart from random anomalies is the unmistakable signature of an intelligence at work. Objects focus on particular people. Or phenomena respond to questions through coded raps – sometimes providing correct answers to questions asked only mentally. Messages appear scrawled on walls, spelled out in arranged stones, or texted from switched-off phones with batteries removed!
In Wales, witnesses asked for money and rolled-up five-pound notes materialized. They joked about needing a pen, and one fell beside them – followed by headed notepaper that proved to come from an office on the floor above, though no one had been near it.
Curiously, poltergeists often evade documentation. Cameras mysteriously fail, batteries drain, footage corrupts. Events stop the moment observers look too closely. And yet, now and again, clear video or thermal evidence does emerge.
Sceptics will reasonably ask: Couldn’t all this be fraud, illusion, or myth?
The study addresses this head-on. Over 300 cases involved formal investigations by police, fire departments, infrastructure services, or parapsychologists. Fraud was detected in only 10% of cases.
Eric found that four out of 10 events clustered around a particular person – the so-called “agent.” Most are under 20 and are often going through stress, conflict, or emotional upheaval, reinforcing the theory that the phenomena are caused by unconscious psychic energy unleashed under pressure. Physicist Walter von Lucadou theorises “quantum entanglement” between people’s psyche and matter.
Whatever the cause, one thing is clear: in our era of burnout, anxiety, and digital overload, we are no less vulnerable to these hauntings than our ancestors. If anything, the stressors of hyper-modern living may be fueling more eruptions from the unconscious mind – opening doors that could lead to amazing breakthroughs.
What if scientists of the future could unravel the mysteries of these phenomena and turn them into real-world innovations? For instance, might the forces that govern levitation be harnessed to create anti-gravity vehicles?
Or could we see space travel without rockets where the principle behind solid objects de-materializing and re-materializing, is used to project craft across vast distances. Or the same mechanism that once hurled stones is now used to accelerate human cell regeneration to heal previously fatal diseases.
In short, the unruly forces defying explanation reveal not only astonishing patterns that may hold the key to understanding one of humanity’s most enduring mysteries, but also could become the next great civilizing leap, reshaping everything from medicine and energy to transport and space travel.
The full study, “A Detailed Phenomenology of Poltergeist Events” by Eric Dullin, is available in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 38, No. 3. Or can be found on the internet.
Anthony Talmage is author of six books in his Psychic Mind series: Dowse Your Way to Psychic Power, In Tune with the Infinite Mind, Unlock the Psychic Powers of Your Unconscious Mind, How to Crack the Cosmic Code, Mindfulness and the Pendulum and, his latest, I’m Running On Empty – What Now? Are all available in Kindle, printed and audio versions from Amazon and all good online bookstores. Find his books on Amazon here
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